Robert S. McNamara

Born June 9, 1916
San Francisco, California

U.S. secretary of defense

R obert S. McNamara played an important role in U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War period of the 1960s. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry from 1945 to 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union, falling just short of direct military conflict. Smart and ambitious, McNamara came from the business world to serve as U.S. secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy (1919–1963; served 1961–63; see entry) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69; see entry).

McNamara was one of a group of superior managers emerging from World War II (1939–45)—smart, arrogant, and seemingly capable of tackling anything. He was young and vigorous and seemed—along with the rest of young President Kennedy's advisors—to be the new face of the new superpower, the United States. McNamara became famous for applying his sharp, mathematical mind to the problems of troop deployment and arms requirements during the peak of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1954–75). As the military engagement in Vietnam grew, he became a lightning rod for criticism of U.S. war policy. He was seen as cold and harsh, as the war continued, and the number of lives lost rose. McNamara came to represent all that was good and bad about the United States during the Vietnam War.

A business scholar

Robert Strange McNamara was born on June 9, 1916, to Robert J. and Claranell Strange McNamara in San Francisco, California. The man who would later be considered one of the smartest men of his generation was raised by parents who never went to college. In fact, his father did not attend school past the eighth grade. Robert J. McNamara was from a family of Irish immigrants. Raised in poverty and sick throughout much of his childhood, through hard work McNamara's father created a middle-class life for his family.

McNamara graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1937. He went on to earn a master's degree in business administration at the Harvard School of Business in 1939. His strength as a mathematician and his expertise in statistical analysis were emerging. Following an impressive performance at Harvard, he was asked to come back and teach. He became a junior faculty member. He also married Margaret McKinstry Craig in 1940; the couple would have two daughters and a son.

At this time, Europe was disintegrating into what would become World War II, and some of the power brokers in the United States were beginning to prepare for the United States' entrance into the war. One of these people was U.S. War Department official Robert A. Lovett (1895–1986). Lovett believed that the Air Force would play a key role in the coming conflict, and that the United States was woefully unprepared. He needed men who could calculate how many planes were needed, and how many inductees would be needed to fly them. Also, he needed to know how many trainers would be required to train the inductees—and then get the planes and the inductees and the trainers all to the right place at the right time.

Lovett asked Harvard Business School to train the men he needed. McNamara was one of the teachers. He was so good that, in 1943, he was commissioned as a captain in the Air Force and sent to help Lovett plan the continuing conflict. For his work during the war, McNamara was presented with the Legion of Merit Medal.

A manager for Ford Motor Company

As the war ended, the team that had managed the U.S. Air Force was noted as being, perhaps, the best group of young managers around. The group, including McNamara, had experienced twenty years of organizational challenges in just a few short years. Recognizing their strengths as a team, a group of the Air Force managers decided to market themselves to corporate America as a group. They were smart, hard working, and could make an impact on a business. In 1946, McNamara and the group, which later became known as the "Whiz Kids," joined Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.

In the mid-1940s, Ford was losing more than nine million dollars a year. McNamara was initially part of the Finance Division of Ford. He quickly established a reputation for using numbers to show how to add value to the company's automobiles without adding manufacturing costs, so that Ford could better compete in the marketplace. Over the years, McNamara rose through the company ranks and was elected to director of Ford in 1957. In 1960, he was elected president of Ford. He had just taken office, however, when he received a call from President-elect John F. Kennedy.

Secretary of defense

President Kennedy was about to take office and was looking to fill key positions within his government. On the advice of Lovett, Kennedy asked McNamara to meet with him. Impressed with McNamara, Kennedy offered him a choice of positions, either the secretary of treasury or the secretary of defense. McNamara was not interested in becoming secretary of treasury. He felt he had more impact on the national economy as president of Ford. But he was interested in secretary of defense, seeing it as a good platform for a commitment to national service.

Prior to accepting the position, McNamara expressed to Kennedy his concern that he was not qualified for the

position. Kennedy, impressed with McNamara's intellect, was not concerned. After all, he reasoned, there were no schools for being president either. McNamara served as secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968, first under President Kennedy and later under President Johnson.

Early in the Kennedy administration, a number of foreign events occurred that challenged the new administration. In particular, the failed invasion of Cuba by U.S.-supported Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs left the impression that President Kennedy did not know how to handle communist expansion backed by the Soviets. Communism is a system of government in which a single party, the Communist Party, controls all aspects of people's lives. In economic theory, it prohibits private ownership of property and business, so that goods produced and wealth accumulated are shared relatively equally by all. McNamara's statistical analysis prior to the invasion turned out to be flawed, when the administration later learned the estimated number of Cubans who were being counted on to rise up against Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926–; see entry) proved far too high. The smaller-than-expected force experienced immediate defeat by Castro's army. Later, McNamara learned the information given to him for his analysis was inaccurate.

In 1961, many in the White House and Congress were debating what to do about the U.S. arms race with the Soviet Union. McNamara was no exception. The United States had 450 missiles. The joint chiefs of staff, the key military advisory group to the president, was advising Kennedy to increase the number to 3,000. However, McNamara recommended 950. In terms of military effectiveness, the military experts concluded that 450 missiles were just as effective as 950. Though McNamara agreed from a military standpoint, for political reasons, McNamara asserted the United States needed at least 950.

In the Kennedy White House and later during the early Johnson days, McNamara was considered a man of action: always in control, always rational, always organizing. He could read faster than people could talk and demanded that briefings be written rather than orally presented to save him time. He always supported his reasons with statistics. As a result, as the country became mired in the Vietnam War, statistics became the focus of anger and derision.

The Vietnam War

For many people in the 1960s, the Vietnam War was "McNamara's War." The Vietnam War primarily involved U.S. efforts to protect noncommunist South Vietnam from takeover by communist-ruled North Vietnam. U.S. aid to South Vietnam began as early as January 1955. Steadily, U.S. military support escalated until hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops were in Vietnam by 1967. As the war evolved, McNamara was often the face of the war, explaining victories and defeats in numbers and body counts. The costs in human lives aside, progress was often measured in the cost of air power used compared to the dollars of resulting damage. As the war continued and took more lives, McNamara's approach seemed cold and harsh. It seemed to ignore some key questions, such as why Vietnam was important to the United States, and just how committed the North Vietnamese were to their cause.

Initially a strong supporter of the war, McNamara became known as the architect of early U.S. policy in Vietnam. By the mid-1960s, however, he was becoming disillusioned. He no longer believed what the generals were telling him, and he was increasingly vocal about his concerns. At the end of 1965, U.S. general William Westmoreland (1914–) in Vietnam requested 200,000 more troops—bringing the total number in Vietnam to 410,000. McNamara was skeptical. He went to Vietnam himself to review the situation and did not like what he saw. He was not sure the United States could win—or that if it did, the price would be worth it.

McNamara voiced his concerns within the Johnson administration, but not to the public. While his son was protesting the war, McNamara still publicly supported President Johnson and the generals. But his challenges to the generals within White House walls were not received well, and he gradually became distant from the joint chiefs of staff and other Johnson advisors. In 1967, McNamara wrote a memo to Johnson stating that the war could not be won, largely due to the weakness of the South Vietnamese government. He recommended a political compromise. The generals were furious at McNamara's memo. In 1968, Johnson removed him from the White House by appointing him head of the World Bank, an international organization created by the United Nations for financing projects in developing nations.

McNamara came to represent to the American public both the strengths and the weaknesses of American intervention in Vietnam. He appeared consistently rational, full of good intentions, and sure he was doing the right thing. However, he seemed blind to indications that perhaps he was not doing the right thing. After the war ended, McNamara publicly admitted some of the doubts and debates of the U.S. leadership during the Vietnam War.

After the war

In 1981, McNamara retired from public service, but not from controversy. He authored several books, including The Essence of Security; One Hundred Countries, Two Billion People; and Out of the Cold. The book that revived debate on the Vietnam War, however, was In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. In the book, McNamara discussed the tensions within the White House during the Vietnam War.

While McNamara confessed his growing doubts about the war at the time more soldiers were being sent to Vietnam and the bombing of North Vietnam was increasing, the admission pleased no one. Supporters of the war felt he had betrayed the soldiers' sacrifice. Opponents of the war felt he should have spoken out much earlier. The aging McNamara weathered the controversy, as he had the social unrest spurred by massive antiwar protests during the 1960s.

Over the years, McNamara—the scholar, the mathematician, the Whiz Kid—has received numerous awards and recognition. He was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (with Distinction), the Albert Einstein Peace Prize, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freedom from Want Medal, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Honorary Medal.

For More Information

Books

Draper, Theodore. "McNamara's Peace." New York Review of Books, May 11, 1995.

Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Ballantine Books, 1969.

Hendrickson, Paul. The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War. New York: Random House, 1997.

McNamara, Robert S. The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

McNamara, Robert S. Out of the Cold: New Thinking for American Foreign and Defense Policy in the 21st Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

McNamara, Robert S., and Brian VanDeMark. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Times Books, 1995.

McNamara, Robert S., James G. Blight, and Robert R. Brigham. Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy. New York: Public Affairs, 2000.

From Cultured Businessman to Cold Warrior

While Robert McNamara worked at Ford Motor Company, he was known as a driven and exacting man. But he also had another side. He removed himself from the world of the automotive executives, choosing to live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a cultured college town. There, he attended art openings and concerts with his wife, and belonged to a book club. He prided himself on having broad interests.

Years later, when friends of his from Ann Arbor would see McNamara on television, talking about body counts and kill ratios and tramping around with troops fighting Cold War communist expansion in the jungles of far-off Vietnam, they would wonder what had happened to the man they had known.